Life On The Road

Yesterday, my drive was mostly uneventful. Trying to cut down the miles on my car, I chose a more direct route down here other than the smart way of taking the freeway all the way. I drove part of the way on a two lane road and then part of the way on a road that wishes it was a two lane road before I finally got to the freeway.

The road that wishes it were a two lane road was CR601. Any road that has country road, aka CR in the road name, I should have figured wasn’t going to be a thoroughfare. I am darn happy I found the road since it had the smallest of signs announcing it.

The best part of this road was I got to drive through when all of the local Amish children happened to be walking to school. The atrocities of the recent shootings in Pennsylvania fresh in my mind, I looked at these innocent beautiful children and just wanted to cry. Most of them seemed so happy to see someone on the road with them, and they waved good morning to me! Ok, that was pretty cool. They are a testament to the “life goes on” theory I guess. It gave me warm fuzzies in my heart for the rest of my drive.

Believe it or not, I found my way to the audit site with only one missed turn. For me, this is a darn good day.

Our hotel is right smack in the middle of downtown. Now I got to tell you, I’ve stayed in some nice hotel rooms before but this one definitely has to be the best of the bunch so far. This is what I love about traveling! All of the rooms in this hotel are suites, not just rooms. This suite I swear is larger than some apartments I’ve had. I could live in this suite with no problem.

You walk in and there is a counter to the left with a microwave, a wet bar and a refrigerator. After that there is a little stone topped table with two chairs. I guess this is the kitchen area. There is an over stuffed chair and ottoman, a sofa and coffee table, a desk and chair and a television. That’s just my living area! Go to the right through some French doors and there are two double beds, a dresser with another TV. Then on the other side of this room is a dressing room, a closet and the bathroom. On the wall next to the beds in the bedroom and on the wall by the desk in the living area are huge picture windows. Did I mention I’m on the 10th floor overlooking downtown? I’m telling you this is way too cool!

When we got to the hotel last night about 6:00 pm, I was standing in the window sort of giggling at even being there. Right across the street from me is an office building. While I was standing in my window looking out, some guy in an office across from me but a couple of floors down was at his window looking up at me. Hey! What’s that about? He kept looking so I finally gave him something to look at. That should cure him of peeping into the hotel across the street for sure. Poor guy probably needs therapy about now. What the heck, he’s never going to see me again and I doubt he could pick me out of a line up anyway!

The only down side of the evening was dinner last night. After I unpacked and relaxed a bit, my boss and I met up for dinner. We got a couple of suggestions from the front desk on where to go for dinner and started walking. We headed for an Italian restaurant about three blocks away.

Nice place, even though it was kind of dark in there. It was really hard to read the menu. But I finally decided on wild mushroom stuffed ravioli in a mushroom sauce. Doesn’t that sound good? It was so awful, it was inedible. It was so salty that even I couldn’t eat it, and I love salt. The waitress wanted to know if I wanted it boxed up and I explained that there is no way I could eat it whether I took it with me or forced it down at the restaurant.

She apologized and sent the manager over. The manager offered to have another meal prepared for me. I didn’t want to start eating now that my boss was done eating, nor did I want to take it back to the hotel. He offered me free dessert which is an offer I usually jump at, but with the bad taste left in my mouth from dinner I didn’t think I could eat that either. So, he did take the offensive meal off of the bill and we called it a night. Oh well, here’s hoping tonight’s fare will be better.

All in all, aside from dinner, it was a good day. I’m still coughing and hacking and blowing my nose which I’m sure all around me are thrilled about. I keep swigging on my cough medicine and hoping for the best.

So much for day one. I’ve been told that I will be traveling for at least the next three months straight. If nothing else, this should be good for the blog. I do love to tell a good story.